


The Heir of Mighty Kingdoms

by fuzzballsheltiepants



Category: Throne of Glass Series - Sarah J. Maas
Genre: Angst, Baby, witchling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-17
Updated: 2017-12-17
Packaged: 2019-02-16 02:32:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13044663
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuzzballsheltiepants/pseuds/fuzzballsheltiepants
Summary: After Erawan's fall





	The Heir of Mighty Kingdoms

A month had passed since Erawan’s fall.  A month since Aelin Ashryver Galathynius and Dorian Havilliard had met on that battlefield and braided their magic together to forge the lock.  A month since they had embraced each other, weeping, so exhausted they could barely stand, as their loved ones fought their way to them through Erawan’s failing troops.    
  
A month since Iskra Yellowlegs had reached them first.  Since the new Queen of Terrasen had torn the Ironteeth witch limb from limb, despite her weak shaking limbs, her gutted magic.  But too late; the witch’s blade had already pierced the young King of Adarlan’s heart.  And Aelin Galathynius had fallen to her knees in the spreading pool of blue and red blood, and mourned her friend as the rest of them reached her.  Too late, always too late.  
  
Manon paced the rolling green hills of her new home, the lands fertile again now that the Crochans and the remaining Ironteeth were united under her rule.  She had never gone back to Rifthold, though she had been told that Chaol Westfall had already done much to rebuild the city; though Aelin, who had taken control of Adarlan in the absence of any surviving Havilliards, had asked her to come to honor Dorian.  She would never go back.  Only that sapphire-eyed King had ever drawn her to it.  
  
As she walked, she felt a sudden fluttering in her abdomen and she stopped, startled.  She pressed her hand over the area, but felt nothing further.  And so she walked on.  
  
*****  
  
Three months had passed since Erawan’s fall.  There was no denying what had happened now; her always taut abdomen was curving, as ripe as the hills around her.  Abraxos would not leave her alone, but followed her as she walked through the fields, pausing occasionally to snuffle at her.  Behind her, Asterin and Vesta trailed, teeth and nails at the ready.  Though the lands were peaceful now, they would not soon forget a hundred years of fighting.  They would not allow harm to befall their queen.  Her heir.  
  
Manon could not help but wonder what the young King would have said, had he known.  Would he have joined her here, in her own country?  Or would he have expected her in Rifthold?  In reality, she had barely known him, though she understood his heart as well as her own.  She knew that he would have let her choose.  And that she would have chosen him.  
  
*****  
  
Six months had passed since Erawan’s fall.  Manon was barely allowed out of her new home, though she snarled at her undesired bodyguards.  If she opened the front door, Abraxos was sprawled across her step; even in the house every movement, every breath, was monitored by the Thirteen.  Well, the Eleven now; she had not replaced Sorrel or Ghislaine.  
  
She was grateful for their attentions when the first pains began.  Initially it just seemed as if the witchling within her was stretching, and her back was cramping in response.  But soon, when she felt her water break, she knew that the witchling - Dorian’s child - was arriving.  Hours passed, the pains becoming more intense, unlike anything she had ever felt.  Not the sharp, brutal pain of her grandmother’s iron nails gutting her, though nearly as intense.  No, this was pain tempered by something she had barely dared consider.  By love.  
  
Asterin had sent for a healer at the first contraction, and Asterin was the one holding her hand now, talking to her through the tears that fell from her gold-flecked black eyes.  And Asterin was the one who took the witchling from the healer as soon as the first cries rent the air, who wrapped her in the blanket one of the Crochans had made and set her on Manon’s chest.  
  
Manon looked down at the tiny new life, whose wailing had quieted as soon as she was in her mother’s arms.  They stared at each other, and unfamiliar wetness ran down Manon’s own cheeks as she looked into her newborn’s eyes.  Sapphire eyes, with flecks of gold.  The eyes of the new queen of Adarlan, the future queen of the Crochans and the Ironteeth.  The heir of mighty kingdoms.


End file.
